The Team

Co-founders

Alycia Pirmohamed, Director

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh, where she is studying poetry written by second-generation immigrants. Her pamphlet, Faces that Fled the Wind, was selected for the 2018 BOAAT Press Chapbook Prize, and she was a recent recipient of the 92Y/Discovery Poetry Contest, the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, and the Gulf Coast Prize for Poetry. Alycia is a co-editor of They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets (Blue Oak Press) and a poetry reader for Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She also curated and edited Ceremony (Tapsalteerie, 2019). Her next chapbook, Hinge, is forthcoming with ignitionpress in 2020.

Jay G. Ying, Programme Manager (Festivals & Partnerships)

Jay G Ying is a Chinese-Scottish poet, fiction writer, critic and translator based in Edinburgh. He is a Contributing Editor for The White Review and Assistant Poetry Editor at Asymptote. His publications include The White Review, Ambit, The London Magazine and The Poetry Review among others. Recently he was selected by Mary Jean Chan as a winner of the 2019 New Poets Prize. Wedding Beasts(2019), a pamphlet, is published from Bitter Melon 苦瓜 and his second pamphlet Katabasis will be published in 2020. ​He is a winner of the Poetry Book Society Student Poetry Prize (2017), shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize (2018) and the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize (2018, 2019).

In 2019 Jay and Alycia received a Literature Matters Award from the Royal Society of Literature.

Andrés N Ordorica, Programme Manager (Community Development & Events)

Andrés N. Ordorica is a Queer Latinx writer and educator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He creates worlds filled with characters who are from neither here nor there (ni de aquí, ni de allá). His fiction has been featured in Confluence Medway, The Acentos Review, 404 ink Magazine. His work has been anthologised in Ceremony published by Tapsalteerie Press, We Were Always Here published by 404 ink, and The Colour of Madness published by Stirling Publishing. His non-fiction has been published by The Skinny, Bella Caledonia, Medium and The Irish Independent.

Jeda PearlLewis is a Scottish writer and poet. Inspired by her Jamaican and Geordie-Scottish heritage, her work often explores the intersections of identity, belonging, secrecy and survival. In 2019, she was awarded Cove Park’s Scottish Emerging Writer Residency and shortlisted for the Moniack Mohr Emerging Writer Bridge Awards. In 2018, she was selected for Written and Arvon’s first BAME writers course. She’s an editor for The Selkie and is a Cambridge Short Story, Momaya Press, Yellow Room and Words with Jam short story finalist. Jeda’s short fiction appears in the TSS Publishing and Momaya Press anthologies and her poetry appears in Multiverse – New International Science Fiction Poetry (Shoreline of Infinity, 2018).

If you are BAME/BIPOC and are a writer with a connection to Scotland or are part of Scotland’s literary landscape – join us!

If you have a stake in Scotland’s literary spaces (bookshops, publishers, literary organisations, academics etc) and are actively addressing diversity and inclusion and want to work with BAME/POC writers, get in touch.

Safer Spaces

At the SBWN, we value inclusive representation, equity and equality. We acknowledge the intersectionality of our network. We will operate a safer spaces policy during all events, projects and initiatives – to include our online forums.